A Study on the Global Strategy and Challenges of Paperless Trade in Korea

한국 전자무역의 글로벌 전략과 과제에 관한 연구

Paperless trade is a new trade paradigm that has innovated on traditional trade procedures, which relied on manual work in the past, and applied an IT-based e-document standard. To realize paperless trade in Korea, a lot of efforts have been made. Korea has overcome many difficulties, a lack of awareness, trials and errors, etc. at the initial introduction stage and strived to establish a stable infrastructure through the government's policy support and active cooperation with the trade business communities and related organizations. Now, Korea became a well-known leader in IT industry, especially in the paperless trade infrastructure and strategic policies. The one-stop trading system named 'uTradeHub' is operated by a paperless trade service provider, Korea Trade Network(KTNET). uTradeHub includes trade finance and settlement, customs clearance and export and import logistics, improving trading procedures and reducing related expenses. Private-Public joint efforts from Korean government and private sectors which have respectively fulfilled their role and function with market-oriented practical policies and strategies has lead Korea a world leading country in paperless trade. Moreover, Korea expended its efforts to the global areas. Korea has started to activate multi-national paperless trade alliances such as PAA(Pan-Asia e-Commerce Alliance), ASEAL(Asia Europe Alliance for Paperless Trading) as well as established the bilateral cooperative networks with China and Taiwan. The one-stop trading system, uTradeHub should keep close cooperations between nations since trade itself is implemented in a cross-border ways. In the near future, it is expected uTradeHub can achieve best results in the simplification of procedures and cost savings when an international linkage is completely established with international cooperations.